Direct mail is a cheap, easy and pretty effective way for a small business to draw in new customers or drum up business with established ones.
Small businesses may prefer to create the mailers themselves, for a medium to large business, you may prefer to hire a direct-mail agency or a print broker. For a mail […]

A direct mail campaign is within the reach of any business, however small. At the simplest level, all you need is a printer, some postage and a little hard work. Crafting a truly productive direct mail campaign, however, requires more care and attention.
Of course, as with anything, you can start from scratch and learn the […]

Market research is an essential planning tool for all sizes and types of businesses.  The great thing is that you don’t need to commit a large budget to collect data about your customers’ views and needs and information about how they make buying decisions. Pertinent market research also helps you to make decisions about where […]

The very success of yor business can depend on the accuracy of your contact database. Having a list of existing and past customers is a very valuable asset. If you have an out of date mailing list, you may be wasting money on print and postage, or your efforts may not be reaching the desired […]

Hear what the experts have to say…
(Survey of business marketers’ opinions)
On 8th November 2005 - Mac McIntosh, publisher of Sales Lead Report and a business-to-business sales lead expert, released the results of a survey that showed what business marketers consider the most and least important direct marketing tactics for business-to-business lead generation.
A survey of […]

Email has become a prime territory for spam, and marketing contact through this medium has become rather devalued. Because of this, direct mail has come to be seen as quite a novel approach in comparison. Direct mail performs very well in other in other arenas, and so it’s easy to fall into the assumption that […]

Step Five: Improving the System
The process of lead generation and qualification is iterative i.e. it improves greatly from consistent closed-loop feedback. Feeding back on a regular basis allows you to continually improve the process. The main idea is that you retrieve a steady influx of useful information from the sales team. Each qualified lead is […]

If you are involved in making appointments for sales staff to meet with decision makers, you may have come across the following frustrations…
A person won’t make an appointment.
You have had your appointment rescheduled several times.
The staff won’t put you through to the decision-maker.
Your salesperson was stood up at the appointment.
The contact won’t return your phone […]

Step Four: Passing on Leads to Sales
Once you have gone to the effort to phone your leads and qualify them, the next stage becomes vitally important. Passing on to the sales team. All your time and investment can go down the pan if this is not done carefully and correctly.
There are five tips I can […]

Step Three: Talk to the prospective leads
The use of the phone in modern lead generation is often overlooked by companies. This is misguided, because high quality outbound calling is by far the most effective mechanism for qualifying leads—especially for a complex sale, in which it is the best option for contacting high-level decision makers.
There is […]